


talking heads

by weatheredlaw



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, Anal Sex, Artist/Muse, Artists, Blood, Body Horror, Cunnilingus, F/M, Murder, Original Character Death(s), Paint Kink, Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 11:09:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karla lets him do what he wants, shivering under the coolness of the paint. “Blue’s my favorite color.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“No. But I look good in it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	talking heads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mariachillin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariachillin/gifts).



> This is my 100th fic on AO3. I feel like it deserves that spot, I'm pleased with this.

The first time he sees her, he isn’t sure she sees him. 

He’s in the subway and she’s standing not five feet away, eyes closed. Lester can hear her music, but can’t place it. Something with a heavy bass. He can’t understand the words, but he can feel the beat, matching his own. She gets onto the subway and Lester stares, misses his own by seconds.

He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t sleep for the rest of the week, sketching her over and over again, the sharpness of her profile, the way her hair fell on her coat, the curve of her lashes. In his drawings he peels back her skin, draws her muscles and bones, draws her bleeding on his canvas, on his floor. He draws himself, cracked open and raw for her, her long, slender fingers reaching into his chest to drag out his heart. 

 

 

 

The second time he sees her, she definitely sees him. 

He goes to the same stop, catches the same subway, and sits right across from her, staring. She looks back, her smile never faltering. Lester wonders if she’ll talk to him, if he should talk to her. Neither of them moves. They just watch. When she gets up to go, Lester goes too, following close behind her through the crowd. Spilling onto the street, he reaches out to catch her wrist, but she slips away, turning to look at him as she heads down the street. Lester stands, abandoned, wanting more. 

At home he keeps drawing, keeps wondering what she looks like under her coat, her fishnets. He imagines how smooth her skin would be under his hands, under his tongue. What it would feel like to bite, to pierce skin and taste blood. He stands in the shower and jerks off, still not satisfied. Still missing _something._

 

 

 

“What do you want?” 

Lester freezes, suddenly face to face with her, suddenly hearing her voice. It’s better than he imagined, and now he can smell her, her perfume, clinging to her skin. She smells like sex and sleeping in and blood and something chemical and pungent, something that he wants to clean off of her so he can get down to the rawness of her. 

“Hey. _Asshole._ Are you gonna answer me or am I gonna have to fuck you up?” Lester swallows.

“I saw you on the subway.” She nods. “What’s your name?”

She looks like she isn’t sure she wants to give that away, but she opens her mouth anyway. “It’s Karla. Just Karla.” He shivers and she looks away. “Do you live around here?” she asks. Lester nods. He wonders if what he wants from her is so obvious, but then it must be. Mac, the junkie next door, said he looked hungry. Starved. Lester reaches out and runs a hand down her arm. Karla leans into the touch. “I don’t know your name.”

“It’s Lester.” 

She laughs. “Yeah, that helps.” But she steps closer, her lips so much closer to his own, and she whispers: “Take me wherever you want.” 

 

 

 

Lester almost wishes he’d cleaned before he brought her here, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Most of the house is actually empty, just a ratty couch and end table that Karla drops her things onto. The kitchen light is missing. The hall light, too. “Cozy,” she murmurs. She wanders down the hall, running her hand along the exposed brick wall. She looks into one of the rooms and then back at him. “Do you paint?” He nods. She points to his stack of sketches from the week. “Can I see?”

“I…” He nods. She picks them up and sifts through them. Most are of her, but if she cares or if it unnerves her, she doesn’t say. She passes sketch after sketch, doesn’t cringe or leave. She runs a finger around the edge of one, of her muscles exposed to the air. Finally she lifts one up with a smirk. 

Karla, naked on his bed, staring at the wall above him, where he might sit and watch. “That’s not what my tits look like at all, Lester.” She sets them aside and walks over to him, lifting her arms around his neck. 

“Then show me,” he says. 

Karla grins, dropping her arms and lifting her shirt up by the hem, revealing her chest. She unclasps her bra and drops it to the floor. Lester’s breath hitches in his throat. “More?” she asks. He nods. She reaches for the button of her shorts, pulling them down with her fishnets, kicking her heels off in the process. She was shorter than him already, but now she’s so much smaller and Lester draws her in, hands traveling over her back, cupping the swell of her ass. “Lester?”

“Hmm?”

“Get naked.” She surges up and kisses him, leaving Lester struggling to undress. She helps him lift his shirt over his head, running her hands over his chest, shoving him toward his bedroom. The comforter is worn thin and the mattress sinks under their weight. “You’ve been alone a long time, haven’t you?” Lester can only groan as she slides his jeans and boxers off his hips and down. “Let me give you what you want. What is it you want, Lester?” 

He turns them around, laying her out flat on his bed. She’s gotten too much control, but he can’t say it hasn’t made him hard, made him want her more. He imagines all the things she could do with him, could make him do, and he’d like that. Right now, though, she wants to give him everything, and Lester is hungry and ready to take. He digs through his bedside table for a condom, sitting up and flicking open the wrapper, rolling it over his cock. Karla draws her knees up for him and helps guide him. She moans as he fills her, and Lester’s worried he’s going to lose it right there, blow his load and leave her unimpressed and unsatisfied. 

“Take it slow, baby. There’s no rush. I’m all yours. I’m yours tonight.” 

_Mine,_ Lester thinks, rolling his hips. He nods, keep his rhythm steady against her. Karla looks right at him, makes the most perfect noises that go straight to his head. Lester can’t stop, now, can’t imagine this with anyone else. He’s desperate to know her every way he can, to split her open and draw out the truth of it all. 

“You gonna come?” She threads her fingers through his hair and it’s then that Lester knows he has no control over this. That she has kept her hands on it and he doesn’t care. “I want you to. Wish you could come on me, baby. Make me yours. But this is okay. This time it’s okay. Come on, Lester. You want to, it’s been so long.” He nods frantically, hips moving faster, the slick, slapping noise of skin on skin filling the room. What else has he wanted? What else _could_ he want? He comes with a shout, holding himself in her until it’s too much.

“That’s good,” she says quietly, smoothing the hair from his face. He’s only just recently grown it, after forgetting to cut it off for six months. It feels good to have her fingers in it, to be touched and tugged. Lester closes his eyes and drops his forehead to her shoulder, shivering. “That was so good, baby. You did so good.”

He looks up at her. “Can I watch you come?” Karla nods and Lester rolls off of her, settling at the end of the bed. Karla reaches out and draws him in, kissing him slow before laying back down. “Can I draw you?”

“You never asked before.” He ducks his head, scowling at her and picking up a book and pencil from the ground. Karla smiles, spreading her legs so he can see. She’s wet and he can see it, wants to get his mouth around her cunt. But he waits, quickly drawing outline of her body, letting the motion of her hand and arm seep into the lines. She angles one of her legs, gasps a little as she slips two fingers inside. She picks up her pace and so does Lester, lines appearing faster as she brings herself closer and closer. She pants, “Almost there,” and Lester moans, drawing as much as he can before she comes with a whine high in her throat. Karla breathes, staring up at the ceiling. Lester puts his book aside and comes to lay next to her.

“Can I paint you?” 

She nods. “Later, though. Lay here with me. It’s cold.” Lester pulls a blanket over them, wrapping his arms around her. “I don’t do this with people. I don’t…” He nods. “I’m not normal. I’m not okay--”

“It’s fine.”

“You don’t understand--”

Lester kisses her. “I don’t need to.”

 

 

 

Lester isn’t normal. He isn’t okay. He doesn’t have to say that to Karla for her to understand. She knows and she gets it and she keeps coming back to him. And maybe that’s all that matters.

They fuck all the time. Sometimes Lester goes to her place, but she doesn’t enjoy it as much. She has a couple of roommates, all of whom immediately dislike him. She spends more time than he thought he’d like at his place, but having her there is a lot like being by himself. She’s silent when there’s nothing to talk about, and she poses for him. Karla is perfect at posing for him. 

“Look to your left and don’t move.” She nods and does as he asks. Today she’s naked, her back facing him. Lester doesn’t ask her to change a single thing, just take off her clothes and sit. Her hair is piled messily on her head, blonde curls sliding down the back of her neck every so often. Lester adds them in, paints her in a background of red hues. 

“Is it blood?” she asks quietly one evening when he’s finished. She’s wearing one of his button downs, her arms draped over his chest, kissing his neck. “It smells like blood.” Lester stiffens and Karla laughs. “Baby you can tell me. I won’t tell a _soul._ ”

“Some of it,” he admits. 

“Have you ever killed anyone?” He hesitates, then nods. “You need to sometimes, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he says simply. He turns to her. “Have you?”

“Once,” she murmurs, slowly starting to undo the few buttons she’s done up on the shirt. “Just once.” Lester stands with her, sliding the shirt from her shoulders and kissing her fiercely. “I was so angry,” she says, voice fading into a moan. “I hated him. I hated him so much.”

“Do you hate me?” Lester asks. 

Karla shakes her head. “Don’t be stupid.” Lester smiles and buries his mouth between her legs, his tongue sliding into her cunt again and again. “More. Lester, _more--_.” He fingers her, one then two, slicking them up before pressing them between her ass cheeks, sliding them both in and carefully stretching her. “Yes. Yes I want it. I want you to.”

“ _Karla._ ” 

Fucking her in the ass is different that anything else they’ve done. She’s quiet for most of it, and so Lester is, too. When he asks her if it’s good, if she’s alright, she nods, makes a tiny noise in her throat and strokes whatever part of him she can reach. Her touch is careful, soothing almost. For him and for her. Lester comes first, pulling out and bringing her off with his mouth. 

“Do you love me?” he asks.

“Yes,” she murmurs. He pushes himself up and kisses her. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Love. I hate the feeling. We should stop,” she says, rolling over to straddle his waist. “Don’t you think?”

Lester shakes his head. “No. I need you.”

“You need the idea of me,” she says plainly. “You need an outlet. You need a body.”

“So do you,” he counters. 

Karla shrugs. “I want you. I think that’s more important than needing. Because when I get you--” She dips her head and kisses him slow, kisses him like they’re burning. “--it’s like being fed.” 

 

 

 

Lester likes having his work showcased because it means money, but he doesn’t like it because it means a monkey suit. He hates suits. 

“I think you look handsome.” Karla comes out of the bathroom taking her hair out of the last curler and brushing through it. “Zip me up?” Lester does as she asks and she turns around, hands on his chest. “Later, I’ll take it all off with my teeth.”

He moans. “I hate you.”

“I know you do.” 

At the gallery, Karla sticks next to him. She’d been lit up at the apartment, but out here, with people around, she’s small in her black dress and flats between all the other women in black dresses and flats. 

“You’re more beautiful than any of them,” he says quietly. Karla tips her head toward him and smiles.

“So are you.” 

Part way through, he drags her into the bathroom and goes down on her against the sink. She brightens up after that. 

There’s a man who keeps making faces at the art, demands to know who painted them, and when he finds Lester, there’s no end to his berating. There’s no style here, he insists. The woman in the paintings looks right at him and it’s unsettling. The colors are wrong. The woman is listless. The backgrounds are dreary. Everything is wrong. Lester clenches his fists and lets the gallery owner deal with him. 

Karla deals with Lester. 

“He’s no one,” she says, holding his face in her hands. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. _Listen to me._ ” Lester looks right at her. “We can take care of this. You and I.” She leans in close. “I want to see you bloody.”

 

 

 

“I have an idea,” Lester says quietly. The man has been dead an hour. They’re home again. Karla is sitting in bed in her underwear, eating leftover Chinese food. They both have blood under their fingernails. The light from the window falls in blue lines over her skin, painting it. Lester loves the way it looks. 

Karla lets him do what he wants, shivering under the coolness of the paint. “Blue’s my favorite color.”

“Yeah?”

“No. But I look good in it.” She chances it and kisses him, and Lester doesn’t regret it. He paints her entire back blue and lays her on her side. He digs out his camera, snaps a dozen shots, paints her chest a deep goldenrod and photographs her again. The man was right about one thing. When Karla looks, she really _looks._ It’s unbridled and raw. Lester doesn’t have to guess what she wants from him. 

She smears blue and gold paint all over his sheets and it covers his hands and his face and his chest and he doesn’t care. In the shower, it mixes down the drain, turns an eerie shade of green that he can’t quite watch.

“He didn’t matter,” she says. “This matters.”

“You matter,” he insists.

“ _We_ matter.”

It’s the first time Lester has ever believed it, but it doesn’t surprise him that she’s the reason why. That he went out and searched for his own kind and found it, in her, so open and raw. 

She lifts his camera and takes a photo of him. When he develops it, he finds there is life in his eyes where there was none before, and that the two of them look out at the world with same hungry eyes, knowing exactly what they want and exactly how to get it.


End file.
